Tuesday, August 12, 2008

All Staff Meeting. Three words that can send a chill down my spine. I suppose as a church, or any organization for that matter, grows, the meetings have to get longer. Each department has to have their say, and all of it is necessary and sometimes even fun. But 3 and a half hours is a long time to sit in one spot when you are accustomed to the level of activity that our house sees. Thank the good Lord for small blessings: we only have these meetings once a month.

Today, I had my kids all arranged to go to my friend Valerye's house. It's my favorite place to take them. For one thing, they love it. But more importantly, Valerye has known all my children intimately since they were either very young (as in our oldest's case) or newborn (all the rest). This means that she is familiar with each of their idiosyncrasies, and I don't have to go into any long diatribes about them when she is watching them. I can more or less drop them and go.

On the down side, she lives nearly an hour away. So I suppose, in a way, it is a good thing the meetings are so long. Just imagine driving an hour and a half (the church is halfway between us) to go to a 30 minute meeting and then driving an hour and a half back home!

Regardless, today was different. A couple of hours before the meeting was to begin, Val called and asked if it would be okay for the oldest three of our children to hang out together while she ran an errand that would take a few hours...well, I mean do you have room in your van for 5 extra kids? We decided that they could hang out in one of the classrooms at the church and watch videos and draw pictures while I had my meeting.

This is my shout-out to the kids. Two of my boys, ages 8 and 10, and her daughter, also age 8, stayed in one room watching movies and drawing pictures, and pretending to be shaggy dogs, or whatever else they did...for three and a half hours!!! I popped my head in to check on them every now and then, but they did absolutely nothing out of line, and they didn't even come to me with their gripe list throughout my meeting. So I think they deserve some serious blog applause for accomplishing the improbable.

On another note, remember the broken glass? Well some men are coming to fix it tomorrow (they are coming to me, yay!!), so that meant that all that three hours of driving around today had to be done with plastic taped over the window...I mean, it was supposed to rain! But the tape came undone when my hubby taped it. Everything was going fine. Well, at least until I hit 35 mph. You never heard such horrified children in your life.

"Oh no! Oh no! The plastic! What do we do?? Oh no! Oh no!"

"Okay guys, calm down it's okay." I look for the best place to pull over.

"But mom! Dad put that there for a reason!!!"

"Yes, and that reason would be because I asked him to do it." I get out and start trying to retape it. It doesn't work because dear hubby had vainly tried to save the paint, and so had not really taped the plastic to anything at all substantial. And more tiny pieces of glass keep nipping at my fingers as I work with it. When I close the door, another small sheet of glass showers in upon the interior of the van.

We drive on down the road to the lovely tune of, "Mom, the wind is blowing my hair. Mom, can't we hurry up and get there? I hate this! Can't you roll the window up? (that's from the 3 yr old). Why do we have to go, anyway? MOM!"

And then, on the way home, IT RAINED! Thank you Jesus, for the rain. But come on! All I can say is that I needed some serious headache powders by the time we got back here! I love my life. Every day, a new adventure. Every day, a new lesson. Speaking of, little Mr. Hothead has already gone to the neighbors to ask if he can wash their car so he can earn money to pay for the window he busted out.

Can you believe she's gonna pay him ten dollars?!? He figured it out...that means he only has to wash 20 cars! ;)